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Some of the significant events in the history of Stanford’s Computer Science Department and Computer Systems Laboratory are listed here chronologically.

Some of the significant events in the history of Stanford’s Computer Science Department and Computer Systems Laboratory are listed here chronologically.

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Mathematics Professor George Forsythe (deceased 1972), Provost Fred Terman, and Associate Provost Albert Bowker conceived of a scientific “escalation” of computing at Stanford from the Computer Center function to an academic teaching and research function. George, together with mathematics professor Jack Herriot (deceased 2003), founded the Division of Computer Science within the Mathematics Department in 1961. George also served as Director of the Computer Center. According to an article in CACM by Donald Knuth, “[by 1964, George’s] Division of Computer Science contained two faculty members besides himself (John Herriot and John McCarthy), plus two young ‘visiting assistant professors’ for whom regular appointments were being arranged (Gene Golub and Niklaus Wirth), and an instructor (Harold Van Zoeren).”

Mathematics Professor George Forsythe (deceased 1972), Provost Fred Terman, and Associate Provost Albert Bowker conceived of a scientific “escalation” of computing at Stanford from the Computer Center function to an academic teaching and research function. George, together with mathematics professor Jack Herriot (deceased 2003), founded the Division of Computer Science within the Mathematics Department in 1961. George also served as Director of the Computer Center. According to an article in CACM by Donald Knuth, “[by 1964, George’s] Division of Computer Science contained two faculty members besides himself (John Herriot and John McCarthy), plus two young ‘visiting assistant professors’ for whom regular appointments were being arranged (Gene Golub and Niklaus Wirth), and an instructor (Harold Van Zoeren).”

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See [http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/uploads/46/knuth-on-Forsythe-1972-CACM.pdf knuth-on-Forsythe-1972-CACM.pdf].

(Louis Fein was one of the first people to suggest that what we now call “computer science” ought to be regarded as a discipline in its own right. In 1958, Lou wrote a report commissioned by Albert Bowker recommending that Stanford set up a school devoted to this discipline. In 1961, Lou published an article in the American Scientist, based on that report, entitled “The Computer-Related Sciences (Synnoetics) at a University in the Year 1975”.)

(Louis Fein was one of the first people to suggest that what we now call “computer science” ought to be regarded as a discipline in its own right. In 1958, Lou wrote a report commissioned by Albert Bowker recommending that Stanford set up a school devoted to this discipline. In 1961, Lou published an article in the American Scientist, based on that report, entitled “The Computer-Related Sciences (Synnoetics) at a University in the Year 1975”.)

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Gio Wiederhold joins the department as Lecturer and participates in the development of ACME, a real-time data-acquisition and processing system for medicine.

Gio Wiederhold joins the department as Lecturer and participates in the development of ACME, a real-time data-acquisition and processing system for medicine.

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SAIL’s first computer, a DEC PDP-6, is installed in June. (For more about the history of SAIL, including the development of a pre-cursor to “windows” and the early installation of terminals in everyone’s offices, see the document [http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm “SAIL Away”] by Les Earnest.

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SAIL’s first computer, a DEC PDP-6, is installed in June. [For more about the history of SAIL, including the development of a pre-cursor to “windows” and the early installation of terminals in everyone’s offices, see the document “SAIL Away” by Les Earnest at:

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http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm.]

Raj Reddy receives the department’s first PhD degree for his dissertation work on continuous speech recognition.

Raj Reddy receives the department’s first PhD degree for his dissertation work on continuous speech recognition.

[For a summary of the life of Bob Floyd, see the “in-memoriam” write-up by Don Knuth at: http://sigact.acm.org/floyd/.]

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(For a summary of the life of Bob Floyd, see the “in-memoriam” write-up by Don Knuth at: [http://sigact.acm.org/floyd/].)

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1969:

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==1969==

Donald Knuth (now emeritus) joins the faculty.

Donald Knuth (now emeritus) joins the faculty.

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The Stanford Instructional Television Network (SITN) begins broadcasting graduate engineering courses to Silicon Valley companies as part of the Honors Cooperative Program. Computer Science courses were later included. The program is subsumed in 1995 by the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD).

The Stanford Instructional Television Network (SITN) begins broadcasting graduate engineering courses to Silicon Valley companies as part of the Honors Cooperative Program. Computer Science courses were later included. The program is subsumed in 1995 by the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD).

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1970:

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==1970==

Bruce Buchanan (1970-1988) and Ken Colby (1970-1974; deceased 2001) join the faculty. Colby was famous for his program “Parry” which simulated the conversation of a paranoid human patient.

Bruce Buchanan (1970-1988) and Ken Colby (1970-1974; deceased 2001) join the faculty. Colby was famous for his program “Parry” which simulated the conversation of a paranoid human patient.

SAIL PhD students Richard Paul and Bob Bolles develop WAVE, a robot programming system, and demonstrate computer controlled assembly of an automobile water pump. (WAVE was the basis for the development of VAL, the Unimate robot programming system, and the AL system which had a large influence on the development of robot programming languages.)

SAIL PhD students Richard Paul and Bob Bolles develop WAVE, a robot programming system, and demonstrate computer controlled assembly of an automobile water pump. (WAVE was the basis for the development of VAL, the Unimate robot programming system, and the AL system which had a large influence on the development of robot programming languages.)

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1974:

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==1974==

Vint Cerf and students and Bob Kahn (DARPA) publish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a key component of the internet.

Vint Cerf and students and Bob Kahn (DARPA) publish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a key component of the internet.

Oussama Khatib's group in the Robotics Lab builds the Stanford holonomic mobile robots, Romeo and Juliet, which are able to execute coordinated and simultaneous hand/arm manipulation and vehicle movement actions during task execution. (These robots were one of the demonstrations shown to distinguished visitors Bill Gates, William Hewlett, and David Packard during the dedication of the Gates Building.)

Oussama Khatib's group in the Robotics Lab builds the Stanford holonomic mobile robots, Romeo and Juliet, which are able to execute coordinated and simultaneous hand/arm manipulation and vehicle movement actions during task execution. (These robots were one of the demonstrations shown to distinguished visitors Bill Gates, William Hewlett, and David Packard during the dedication of the Gates Building.)

Pre-1965

Mathematics Professor George Forsythe (deceased 1972), Provost Fred Terman, and Associate Provost Albert Bowker conceived of a scientific “escalation” of computing at Stanford from the Computer Center function to an academic teaching and research function. George, together with mathematics professor Jack Herriot (deceased 2003), founded the Division of Computer Science within the Mathematics Department in 1961. George also served as Director of the Computer Center. According to an article in CACM by Donald Knuth, “[by 1964, George’s] Division of Computer Science contained two faculty members besides himself (John Herriot and John McCarthy), plus two young ‘visiting assistant professors’ for whom regular appointments were being arranged (Gene Golub and Niklaus Wirth), and an instructor (Harold Van Zoeren).”
[See: http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/guzdial/uploads/46/knuth-on-Forsythe-1972-CACM.pdf.]

(Louis Fein was one of the first people to suggest that what we now call “computer science” ought to be regarded as a discipline in its own right. In 1958, Lou wrote a report commissioned by Albert Bowker recommending that Stanford set up a school devoted to this discipline. In 1961, Lou published an article in the American Scientist, based on that report, entitled “The Computer-Related Sciences (Synnoetics) at a University in the Year 1975”.)

Prof. Bill Miller (now emeritus) joined Stanford as Professor of Computer Science in December of 1964. Bill also served as Professor and head of the Computation Group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Motivated by a comment by George Forsythe, in 1964 Gene Golub developed a stable and robust algorithm for computing the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The algorithm is used in a variety of applications, including search engines, signal processing and data analysis.

1965

The Department of Computer Science is created in January within the School of Humanities and Sciences with George Forsythe as chair. (All of the computer science people in Mathematics move to the new department.) Department offices and facilities are located in Polya and Pine Halls in the Jordan Quad. The department is authorized to grant PhD and MS degrees.

Edward Feigenbaum (now emeritus) joins the department in January and later that year takes over as Director of the Computer Center from Forsythe.

The Stanford Artificial Intelligence project is established by John McCarthy. Together with Les Earnest, they form the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) in a partially constructed, abandoned building (off Arastradero Road, near Felt Lake) donated by G. T. E.

The DENDRAL project for computing molecular structure from mass-spectrogram data is begun by Ed Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg (Professor of Genetics). Bruce Buchanan (Research Associate) joins the project in 1966.

1966

Gio Wiederhold joins the department as Lecturer and participates in the development of ACME, a real-time data-acquisition and processing system for medicine.

SAIL’s first computer, a DEC PDP-6, is installed in June. [For more about the history of SAIL, including the development of a pre-cursor to “windows” and the early installation of terminals in everyone’s offices, see the document “SAIL Away” by Les Earnest at:
http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/sailaway.htm.]

Raj Reddy receives the department’s first PhD degree for his dissertation work on continuous speech recognition.

John Chowning, a Stanford PhD in Music, develops his ideas on computer synthesis of music at SAIL, leading to a patented synthesizer that was licensed to Yamaha. Chowning later formed a computer music research group called CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) in the Music Department at Stanford.

1968

The Computer Systems Laboratory is established (then called the Digital Systems Laboratory).

The Computer Forum, an industrial affiliates group, is started by Professors Ed McCluskey, Arthur Samuel, and Bill Miller.

Bill Miller is appointed Associate Provost for Computing to facilitate the extension of computing across the campus.

The Stanford Instructional Television Network (SITN) begins broadcasting graduate engineering courses to Silicon Valley companies as part of the Honors Cooperative Program. Computer Science courses were later included. The program is subsumed in 1995 by the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD).

1970

Bruce Buchanan (1970-1988) and Ken Colby (1970-1974; deceased 2001) join the faculty. Colby was famous for his program “Parry” which simulated the conversation of a paranoid human patient.

Ed Feigenbaum initiates the Heuristic Programming Project (HPP)—home of many ensuing AI programs and projects including MYCIN by Ted Shortliffe and MOLGEN by Mark Stefik.

1973

Terry Winograd joins the faculty.

SAIL PhD students Richard Paul and Bob Bolles develop WAVE, a robot programming system, and demonstrate computer controlled assembly of an automobile water pump. (WAVE was the basis for the development of VAL, the Unimate robot programming system, and the AL system which had a large influence on the development of robot programming languages.)

1974

Vint Cerf and students and Bob Kahn (DARPA) publish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a key component of the internet.

Stanford's NIH-sponsored SUMEX-AIM resource, headed by Ed Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg, demonstrates the power of the ARPAnet for scientific collaboration.

1977

Mike Flynn appointed director of Computer Systems Laboratory and director of Computer Forum.

Don Knuth begins working on TeX, a document-typesetting program (a prototype was started in 1978).

A project using AI to exploit databases was started by Gio Wiederhold with help from Daniel Sagalowicz, Earl Sacerdoti, and Gordon Novak of SRI (1977-85).

1979

People begin using a prototype of MetaFont, a system developed by Donald Knuth for developing fonts for use with TeX.

Work continues at SAIL on using Xerox experimental laser printing systems, leading to the founding of laser-printer maker Imagen by Luis Trabb-Pardo (CS PhD ’78) and Lester Earnest (Executive Director of SAIL).

Bill Miller is appointed director of the Computer Forum and also becomes the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management in the Graduate School of Business and President and CEO of SRI International.

Xerox Altos computers installed in the basement of Margaret Jacks. They introduce CS students to WYSIWYG output. (Unfortunately they were delivered without the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language.)

James Clark and students found Silicon Graphics, a producer of high-performance computer graphics machines.

1985

Nils Nilsson (now emeritus) joins the department as chair.

The department moves into the School of Engineering from the School of Humanities and Sciences. An agreement between the CS and EE departments allows faculty to transfer from one department to the other as they wish.

Tom Binford and his group in the Robotics Lab builds an omni-directional mobile robot, MOBI, and demonstrates vision-based navigation among obstacles.

1986

David Ungar (1986-1991) joins the faculty.

An undergraduate major in computer science begins in September and establishes offices and clusters in Tresidder.

Nils Nilsson chairs a committee to consider needs and plans for a new computer science building.

Bill Gates spends December 1 at the department to hear about CS/CSL research. At the request of Dean James Gibbons, Gates agrees to contribute the “naming gift” for a new computer science building.

1989

Serge Plotkin joins the faculty.

Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the campus. The following recollection is from Vaughan Pratt:

“The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake brought planning [for a new building] to an abrupt halt, quite literally. It occurred during a late Tuesday afternoon building planning session in Margaret Jacks, in the meeting room adjacent to room146. At around 4:55 pm I asked why the proposed building couldn't copy the pleasing fractal shapes of the main quad more closely. One of the planners said that those shapes were too susceptible to earthquake damage. At 5:04 pm the quake struck, illustrating his point by doing considerably more damage to the quad than to the other buildings around campus.”

(Actually, the meeting was just upstairs from 146. We saw the foyer chandelier swinging as we headed downstairs to leave the building.)

1995

Nick McKeown (EE/CSL) and Daphne Koller join the faculty.

The MIDAS project initiated by Jeff Ullman and Rajeev Motwani (1995-2000). The data mining group at Stanford, called MIDAS, was an informal umbrella organization, for a variety of groups that share an interest in data mining. Even though the core of MIDAS came from the InfoLab at Stanford, there were participants from the AI and Graphics groups as well as the Statistics and Linguistics departments.
[See: http://db.stanford.edu/midas.html.]

Oussama Khatib's group in the Robotics Lab builds the Stanford holonomic mobile robots, Romeo and Juliet, which are able to execute coordinated and simultaneous hand/arm manipulation and vehicle movement actions during task execution. (These robots were one of the demonstrations shown to distinguished visitors Bill Gates, William Hewlett, and David Packard during the dedication of the Gates Building.)

Bill Dally initiates the Imagine Project to develop a programmable architecture for achieving the performance of special purpose hardware for graphics and image/signal processing.
[See http://cva.stanford.edu/projects/imagine/]

2001

Serafim Batzoglou joins the faculty.

Fouad Tobagi appointed director of Computer Forum (2001-2004).

Daphne Koller initiates the Computer Science Undergraduate Research Internship (CURIS) program whose goal is to encourage students, particularly CS undergraduates, to get involved in CS research with faculty mentors early in their careers.

Bill Dally initiates the Merrimac Streaming Supercomputer Project to develop a streaming supercomputer (SS) that is scalable from a single-chip to thousands of chips.
[See http://merrimac.stanford.edu/.]

Monica Lam initiates the Collective Desktop Architecture project to develop a new computing system architecture that is secure, reliable, easy to administer, and provides ubiquitous access to users' computing environments.
[See: http://suif.stanford.edu/collective/index.html.]

Andrew Ng initiates the STAIR project (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot). Andrew says, “[its] goal is not to engineer one robot to solve a narrowly defined task but to create a single platform to perform a wide variety of tasks.”
[See: http://soe.stanford.edu/profiles/profile_infotech_ng.html.]